Regenerative Braking

[Richard_FM]

No brake lights if you change down purely to slow down. Though I don't think that's being kind to the gearbox.

My brother did an experiment, long ago on an old car. He claimed cutting brake pipes or similar to disable braking to kill the person coming down the hill only works with automatics (normal in 1950s Hollywood?). So he pretended no brakes and slowed car on steep hill (after reaching a scary speed) so as to be able to stop by turning to kerb at the crossroads at the bottom. It probably did no good to clutch, gearbox or engine. Wasn't good for my nerves.

The Nissan Micra I used to drive had a fair amount of brake pedal travel before the brakes started to slow it down so I normally would shift down the gears as I was slowing down to help things.

Normally when I need to ease off a small amount of MPH when travelling on the level or uphill I'll just lift off the accelerator & "speed bleed" (as I call it) rather than use the brakes, making sure nothing is close behind.

[Ed_Dinning]

Hi Richard, all valid techniques that ease braking and give better control of the car ~ thinking ahead!

In many earlier electrical vehicles regen was not all it was cracked up to be, as the high current returned to the battery was not converted to charge in an efficient manner.
Capacitor storage and or then return to battery or drive is a much more efficient process

Ed

[peter scott]

Peter, if there's no ammeter how do you know you're getting regeneration?

It has a large dial with a pointer and regions. Below zero it says Charge and above zero it says Ready (whatever that means) and the ready region is divided into 25%, 50% etc indicating the amount of power you are using.

Peter

[peter scott]

I had a Ford Puma for a week that uses the 1.0 micro-hybrid. The normal 1.0 Ecoboost is quite a nice engine to drive, but the mild hybrid - just a 48V system, with a belt-driven alternator/motor - made it quite a bit nicer.

One of my recent cars had cruise control with braking.

My Suzuki Swift back home has the belt driven alternator/motor and it is very nice with starting torque that makes it virtually impossible to stall it on launch.

It also has adaptive cruise control which is great because you can set your desired speed and go to sleep as it will always maintain a safe distance between you and anything in front of you including people and animals. If it thinks you are about to collide it will slam the anchors on although I've never tested that but there is a warning before it panics and I have heard that because it doesn't always know what you are going to do next.

Peter

[peter scott]

I discovered how to make this Audi thing recover energy on the overrun.

You have to be in flappy paddle mode. It then recovers quite well but presents yet another cause for complaint. Although flappy paddle mode suggests a clutchless manual mode, unfortunately it's not. It doesn't stay where you put it and is for ever changing down when it's not required meaning that I'm for ever changing it back up again. Give me a proper manual cog box any day.

Peter

[Mark Hennessy]

The car I mentioned earlier (with cruise control plus brake) also had flappy paddles. If you changed gear with them, it would revert back to auto control after a brief delay - it was occasionally handy if you wanted to set up for a corner that you could see, but the gearbox couldn't. It did work pretty well.

If you wanted full manual, you pushed the auto gear lever to the side. In that position, it only changed gear when it had to (because you were in a totally unsuitable gear). As well as the paddles, you could knock the gear level back and forth to go up and down (the paddles were an optional extra).

Perhaps there's a similar setup in the Aldi waiting to be discovered?

[Cobaltblue]

I've had my Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV for 4 years now it doesn't have a gearbox so you can't "change gears" you can have a lot or a little regen controlled by paddles the only time you get no regen is when the car is fully charged via charger AC or DC.

It's a bit disconcerting when I leave the office with a full charged car having to actually use the brakes.
It has a power meter on the dash as well as a range meter for both electric and fuel along with a gauge for the fuel and battery. If you want to see the energy flow you can bring that up on the display.

When driving long distance I will be changing the Regen to suit my needs you don't even consciously think about it.

You can set the car to charge the batteries whilst driving or as I do set it to save mode where it uses the batteries to reduce the need for the engine to provide the power on acceleration or steep hills it then recovers the energy going down hill or slowing.

Both acceleration and breaking are a combination of the electric motors and the engine/ brakes you can't feel which it's seemless.

Cheers

Mike T

[joebog1]

So, gentlemen, how far can all these cars of yours go on a full charge? . The reason I havent even bothered to check them out, is that range is generally quoted as maximum 300 kliks or so.
So for me to even drive to Townsville I would have to stop 3/4 the way there and recharge. Its quoted as 387 kilometers and takes 4 hours and thirty nine minutes.
Townsville is the next decent sized town to here. If I go inland there is one stretch of 680 kliks with NOTHING in between, except roos and emu's.

Joe

[Murphyv310]

Brilliant.
I haven't stopped laughing for the last five minutes Joe.

[peter scott]

Thanks Mike, I hadn't considered what happens when the battery is fully charged and I'm not getting anywhere more than about a quarter of full charge having taken the car on with zero battery charge.

Joe, The maximum range on battery alone with this Audi is specified as 65 km so even worse than you were thinking of but when I filled up the petrol tank the dash suggested that it had range enough for 650 km. I drove about 150 km today and I think the range is currently showing 520 km on petrol and 10 km on battery but I was driving as economically as possible.

Peter